Jan. 6, 2007: Fire marshal gave two reasons for not seeing foam

Monday

Feb 4, 2013 at 11:27 AM

By Paul Edward Parker

The former West Warwick fire marshal has given two different explanations for why he did not order the Station nightclub to remove highly flammable polyurethane foam that had been placed on the building's walls as soundproofing and that helped a deadly fire race through the building, ultimately claiming 100 lives.

Days after the Feb. 20, 2003, fire, Fire Marshal Denis P. Larocque told investigators that he had been blinded by anger after seeing that an illegal door he had ordered removed had been reinstalled.

Four months later, Larocque told a grand jury that he did not see the foam during that inspection because he wasn't conducting an in-depth inspection and wasn't looking to see whether the walls had been covered illegally with flammable material.

Larocque's grand jury testimony was released this week by Kathleen M. Hagerty, a lawyer for Michael A. and Jeffrey A. Derderian, the brothers who owned the nightclub. Last month, Superior Court Presiding Judge Joseph F. Rodgers Jr. approved disclosure of normally secret grand jury transcripts and ordered Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch to make them available to the public. Lynch has said he expects that to happen at the end of the month.

Larocque's testimony, on June 25, 2003, also covered why he increased the capacity of the club only three months after he had set it and how he informed the Derderians of that capacity.

The first time Larocque had been asked about the polyurethane foam in the building was only days after the fire, according to a transcript of an interview with Larocque conducted by investigators from the state police and the state fire marshal's office. Larocque told them he had finished inspecting part of the building in November 2002 when he noticed the door, which illegally swung into the building, had been put back up after being removed under his order a year earlier.

"My focus on that point was the door, which I went over and checked the door at the end of the inspection," Larocque said, according to the transcript. "I really got upset that someone would reinstall something that we had already cited them for."

When Larocque testified before the grand jury, he explained his oversight:

"These are called fire safety inspections, what we do for liquor license renewals. These are not full building code-compliance inspections. ... What we call the - we call a four E's, these types of inspection. That's extinguishers, emergency lighting, exit signs and egress. These type of inspections are pretty much focused on those items. ... These are inspections geared toward those basic items."

The grand jury also spent time on the issue of the nightclub's capacity. In December 1999, Larocque set the building's capacity at 317, then increased it to 404 in March 2000. Prosecutor William J. Ferland asked what had changed in the three months.

"[Michael] Derderian was making changes ... to the building, and he wanted to know - he knew the occupancy of the building based upon the previous owner. And he wanted to know what the limits of the building were. What the building could accommodate."

"And what did you tell him?"

"And that would be based upon its use, how he used the building. Some buildings that use the same layout, day after day, the occupancy really doesn't change. But when you get into buildings that could use different function rooms differently, that number could change."

"So what did Mr. Derderian say in response to what you had already determined the number to be?"

"He wanted to know if the building could hold four hundred people."

"So he was specifically looking for four hundred?"

"Yes."

Hagerty, Derderian's lawyer, said this week that that conversation never took place.

Larocque recalculated the capacity, using a different formula and with the agreement the Derderians would remove furniture from part of the club, boosting its capacity.

Hagerty said that conversation also never took place. She said the Derderians never were told of the capacity before the fire.

A grand juror also asked Larocque about the capacity, "After you spoke with him verbally did you write this down and send it to him as a backup, saying this is - as per our conversation this is your occupancy number for sitting, this is your occupancy for standing? ... Is there anything in writing from you to him about that?"

"The exact language of what you're speaking, I know I gave someone those numbers, okay, in hard copy form. My recollection is he was given that in writing. I'm not positive. My recollection is I would have put it in writing to him, although I don't have that copy. But I remember handing someone, and I'm not sure if it was this time or the first time we had come up with occupancy numbers, thinking to myself there's no doubt as to what these numbers are. Everyone knows what the number is."

Another juror asked whether a capacity placard to post on the nightclub's wall had been issued, "Is that your department or does a local business do that?"

"We provide the sign, it comes from the state fire marshal's office," Larocque said.

"Did you provide one for The Station?"

"In this particular case, there were so many variables as to how I arrived at that occupancy number, my concern was posting that 404. This number was arrived at using standing room, without the table and chairs, with these pool tables moved to the side. ...I didn't want to post a 404 sign and have them use it any way they want it, which they could have done."

"So, accountability-wise," a juror asked, "if you don't give them a sign and they're supposed to have a sign, who gets cited for it?"

"My concern was posting that number and having them use it, not in how it was achieved."